


underneath the mistletoe

by darcylindbergh



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves a Santa Claus Disguise, Christmas Fluff, Crowley loves Aziraphale, Dowling Era, First Kiss, M/M, Mistletoe, Through the Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28368363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: “Oh, for Satan’s sake,” Nanny hissed through the dark. “What in Hellfire are you doing?”There was a thump, and a bump, and something that may or may not have been an extremely expensive Christmas ornament shattering on the hardwood floor and then, quite suddenly, finding itself whole and hanging, astonished, in its place.“Oh, bother,” someone said, and then, sighing dramatically: “Let there be light.”*Nanny encounters Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley, Nanny Ashtoreth/Santa Claus
Comments: 127
Kudos: 320





	underneath the mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, y'all, and a happy new year!

“Oh, for Satan’s sake,” Nanny hissed through the dark. “What in Hellfire are you _doing?”_

There was a thump, and a bump, and something that may or may not have been an extremely expensive Christmas ornament shattering on the hardwood floor and then, quite suddenly, finding itself whole and hanging, astonished, in its place.

“Oh, bother,” someone said, and then, sighing dramatically: “Let there be light.”

A soft, white light filled the parlor, casting its glow over an enormous Christmas tree, trimmed with velvet and studded with glass baubles, under which a Santa Claus was ostensibly trying to stuff a collection of shiny presents.

“I’m _trying_ ,” the Santa said, petulantly trying unwrap a rope from his bag that had got caught around an ankle, “to make sure that poor boy has a happy Christmas. Do you know, they got him a little basketball hoop? And a little drum kit?”

Nanny and the Santa looked at the glaringly obvious shapes wrapped in elegant gold paper.

“He’ll grow into them,” Nanny said, uncomfortable in the way that meant she thought Santa was right but wasn’t willing to admit it. “Besides, I’m not sure he’s even going to know that it’s Christmas. He’s four. _Months_. All he’s going to know is that there are bright lights and lots of fun crinkly paper to play with.”

Santa glared at her, the effect of which was only marginally subdued by the great white beard he’d grown for the occasion. “Will you just come and help me with these? I want to get out of here before they call the police.”

Nanny huffed, but she went, helping to unload any number of gifts from the red bag Santa had carried in—there were little felted fruits and vegetables just big enough to grab at without being a swallow hazard, and a much larger plush elephant meant to provide stability during a nap, a hooded bath towel that promised to turn the baby into a panda bear, a tummy-time water mat, something proclaiming itself to be a _tinkle-crinkle caterpillar_ which Nanny almost refused to set out, wooden blocks, a sit-and-see mirror, and a kick-n-play piano gym, whatever that was.

Once Santa’s bag of tricks had been emptied, which took a lot more doing than the size of the bag might have suggested, he stood back and clapped his hands with delight. “Oh, it’s perfect.”

“Perfect,” Nanny agreed. “He’ll be a spoiled little thing before he’s even a year old.”

“Pish posh,” Santa said. “Christmas is all about peace and hope and goodwill toward men. This one is _ours_ , Nanny, my dear.”

She sneered, and shot back, “Greed. Corruption. One-upmanship.”

“Caroling, warm nights by a cosy fire, family, traditions—”

“Appropriating other traditions and holidays in order to convert—”

“And,” Santa said triumphantly, “ _love_. Oh, and biscuits.” He had noticed the plate of milk and biscuits set out, and obligingly left his crumbs behind so little Warlock would know he’d been.

Nanny, for her part, watched Santa delicately eat the biscuits one by one and resolved to take credit for the whole lot of it before Harriet Dowling even made it downstairs—that was perfectly evil, obviously, and if the Dowlings thus had no cause to worry about an actual Santa Claus breaking and entering on Christmas Day, so much the better.

“Well,” Santa finally said, wiping his hands and picking up his now-emptied bag. “Happy Christmas, Crowley. Don’t think you’ll see me until after the weekend, I suppose—I’m going back to London to look in on the bookshop.”

“If you happen to have a later edition of Winnie the Pooh,” Nanny began, but Santa waved her off.

“It’s already under the tree, you impatient thing.”

Nanny _hmmphed_ , apparently satisfied. “Are you planning to go back up the chimney then? What I wouldn’t have given to see you come down it.”

“I didn’t come down it,” Santa said, rolling his eyes. “All that soot—I’d have been a mess! No, no, I have standards. I’m just going to sneak out the kitchen door.”

Santa snapped his fingers to turn out the light, and Nanny followed him down the hall, the two of them chatting quietly as they went about this and that: whether a four-month-old child really could be expected to show any signs of goodness or of badness, at what age one might expect to begin to see signs of a devourer of worlds, and what that really meant, what the odds were of the whole matter becoming a bit lost in the terrible-twos stage. They were so caught up that they hardly noticed themselves traveling through the kitchen and arriving at the little alcove of the back entry.

“Goodnight, then,” Santa said, in the manner of someone who very much wasn’t ready to say goodnight but who had no alternatives presented to him.

“Goodnight,” Nanny returned, in the exact same manner.

“If you get a little time off, perhaps on Boxing Day, do come to London.”

“Couldn’t keep me away, angel. Need to keep an eye on you, after all.”

“Of course,” Santa agreed. “Well—oh, dear. What’s—?” He had looked up. There, hanging from the doorway that led from the back entrance through to the main kitchen, was a little sprig of something green and white.

Nanny grinned, so devilishly that Santa felt a sudden pang of missing her, even though she was right there. “Cook’s been trying to catch Jim Barnes under it for days. Instead she’s caught Charlie Benson three times. Why she hasn’t caught on yet, only Satan knows.”

Santa hummed, still looking up at the mistletoe. Then he looked back at Nanny.

“May I?” he asked.

Nanny stared at him. “May you what?”

He gestured up at the sprig. “It’s tradition.”

Nanny continued to stare, increasingly incredulous. “You want to—?”

“If you don’t want me to, of course, that’s quite—”

“I didn’t say that.”

They stared at each other.

“Well,” Santa said, finally, “may I?”

Nanny blinked behind her dark glasses, slow and deliberate, and then smoothed her hands down her jacket and sort of _slithered_ in place, like she was bracing herself for something. “You may.”

Santa stepped in close. Put a hand to her cheek. Leaned in, very slowly, and kissed her.

It was a very quiet kiss. A brush and a press and gone again, barely anything more than an impression of warmth and rather quite of a lot of white fluffy beard, and then Santa’s hand was falling away, and the chill wind from the night outside was blowing through the alcove, and then Nanny was alone.

She touched her hand to her lips, as if to make sure she could still feel them properly, and then she went up to bed.

*

Here we must take a moment to discuss how traditions are born.

There are two ways a tradition can come into being. The first is with keen deliberation, a determined intent to make it so, motivated by holiday adverts of improbably happy families decorating sugar cookies, or by thieving the best ideas from the local mummy group, or by Pinterest, which a certain demon had gotten a commendation for despite having had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

The second is by crashing, uncontrollably and unexpectedly, into it.

Nanny was ready for Santa the next year. She had put out Santa’s favourite biscuits—not the sloppy sugar cookies Harriet Dowling had attempted to decorate with a precocious one-year-old—and, remembering Santa’s standards, lit a small fire in the hearth, since he wouldn’t be using it anyway. Then she sat on the sofa, smoothed down her sensible skirt, and waited.

“I don’t recall you ever having _knitted_ before,” a voice said, appearing from nowhere.

“It’s part of the disguise,” Nanny said absently, finishing her row before setting the project—an unidentifiable blue and cream thing—aside. “Nannies knit. I’m a Nanny.”

Santa laughed softly, and Nanny looked up just in time to see his eyes crinkling with fondness. His beard, still white and full, wasn’t as long this year as it had been the last.

“It was nice of you to wait up for me,” he said, hefting his red velvet bag toward the Christmas tree. Thaddeus Dowling, the great dolt, had bought little Warlock an American football bigger than the baby was himself as well as a tricycle, and Harriet Dowling herself had wrapped up no less than three craft boxes involving parts far too small for an infant, and a number of things that were marked for the baby but were really for herself.

“It was no such thing,” Nanny scowled. “I’m only here to supervise. Make sure you don’t get up to anything nefarious.”

“I’m never nefarious,” Santa said, still rather jovial as he unpacked a large red hexagonal shape-sorter, a wooden rainbow made up of nesting blocks in various colours, an activity toy with beads attached to variously intercrossing bars, a red wagon with _Radio Flyer_ printed along the side, as if that made any sense at all, a toy tractor with appropriately-sized plastic farm animals as well as a toy train, and a water play table. “I’m a force of good.”

“Well, we can’t have that either. Christmas should never be _too_ good, you know. There ought to be at least some misery about it—terrible families, fighting over the Christmas puds, that sort of thing.”

Santa rolled his eyes, settling a tiny play piano into place before folding up his bag. “There’ll be plenty of time for that when he’s older. For now, though, Christmas ought to be nothing but magic.”

“There won’t be Christmas when he’s older,” Nanny pointed out. “Since he’s going to end the world.”

“He’s not either. Besides, he still hasn’t managed to figure out how to eat a cracker without putting his whole fist in his mouth, so there’s no need to worry quite yet. Are those biscuits for me?”

Nanny didn’t deign to answer this question, since they obviously were. Santa sat next to her on the sofa to partake, moaning softly with delight. Nanny turned red, and picked up her knitting again, and dropped three stitches in a row.

“Well,” Santa said finally, “I suppose I ought to get back.”

“London tonight?”

“Thought I might wait until tomorrow night, actually,” Santa said, with a side-long glance. “In case anyone else were going to drive down tomorrow.”

“I may do,” Nanny said, noncommittedly, in exactly the way that meant she was very much committed to it. “If you wait until after I put Warlock to bed, I could drive you back.”

Santa beamed at her. “Oh, _would_ you?”

“Bah,” Nanny said, but she was still blushing. “It’s not a favour or anything, angel. S’just common sense.”

The last crumbs of the biscuits found their spots on the plate, miraculously spelling out _Merry Christmas_ for a little boy who could not read them yet. The light of the fire dimmed, and went out, and Nanny and Santa made their way once again through the house to the back entry in the kitchen, and its mistletoe-festooned alcove.

“Oh,” Nanny said, “I wasn’t sure it would be up this year.”

Santa looked up at the innocent-looking sprig, still in pride of place. “Cook finally did catch on to Charlie Benson,” he acknowledged. “But it was Harriet Dowling that caught Jim Barnes under it in the end, and he did rather take advantage of the moment.”

“No more than Harriet did,” Nanny snorted. “It was her that hung it up again this year.”

And Santa looked back at her, her sharp angles throwing deep shadows across her face, her eyes hidden behind her lenses, and asked again, “May I?”

Nanny didn’t hesitate this year, didn’t pretend to misunderstand. She nodded once, almost harshly, and turned her face toward him.

Santa hesitated, though. More than he had the first time. He seemed to understand that getting caught once under a mistletoe might have been written off easily enough as coincidence, but twice—in the same spot, no less—was beginning to look a little deliberately blind.

In the end, though, he did step in. Put his hand to Nanny’s cheek. Leaned closer, put the corner of his mouth against the corner of hers, and breathed. And breathed. And breathed.

And then Nanny shifted, and suddenly they were kissing properly. Not the bare brush of last year, but with a press, and a press back, with the soft movements of a jaw, the crinkling noise of a beard, the shift of a nose tilting to fit against a nose. It wasn’t long, and it wasn’t deep, but it was no kiss of brotherly affection either; it was not the sort of kiss that could be anything other than a _kiss_.

Then it was over.

“Goodnight, Crowley,” Santa said, impossibly soft, lingering close.

“Goodnight, Aziraphale,” Nanny said, and it was her turn, this year, to step back, and away, and disappear into the house.

She couldn’t have stayed another minute, she knew. Not without kissing him again.

*

The next year, Warlock Dowling had turned two, and Santa’s plate of biscuits had a blue-and-cream knitted scarf set next to the plate. Nanny met Santa at midnight, just as she had the previous two years, and helped him set out a whole suite of toys and games—a puzzle with very large, simple pieces, an alphabet matching game, a bubblemaker, a kinetic sand set, a superhero mask and cape set, and a play tent shaped like a rocketship were just some of the tidings, and Nanny herself had snuck a stars-and-planets projector under the tree as well.

They chatted gamely enough while Santa ate the biscuits, but already the tension had already begun to rise. By the time Nanny was leading him out of the parlor and down the hall toward the kitchen, neither could think of anything to say.

There, in front of the back entry, was the mistletoe.

“May I?” Santa asked, his voice gone hoarse, but Nanny had already stepped in close, her hand reaching up to his freshly-applied beard. She had long, squared fingers and a broad palm, sturdy and a little rough with six thousand years worth of wear, but she was still gentle when she touched.

She carded her fingers through the wiry white of the beard, and smiled. “You could just wear a fake one, you know.”

“What would be the fun?” Santa grinned, breathless already, and then Nanny was kissing him.

This kiss was different yet again—this kiss was about more than meeting, about more than contact. This kiss was about _knowing_ , Santa thought. Nanny kissed with intention, with curiosity, as if she had questions she wanted answered, her fingers still in his beard, pressing herself against him, all angles and planes and buttons and wool, and when Santa opened to her, in some automatic surprise, she did not hesitate to taste.

Her tongue was quick, sliding and retreating, tasting and taking his taste back with it. Santa wondered if that was the way all kisses went, or if it was just something about Nanny, something serpentine; then she did it again, and he didn’t think of anything at all.

“Angel,” she breathed again his mouth, voice low, and his hands clutched at her for a moment, astonished to find themselves filled with hips and ribs, with heat and breath, “ _angel_.”

“Crowley,” he breathed back, a call and response, and kissed Nanny again, tasting back. She tasted like smoke, and like cinnamon, and like she’d stolen one of his biscuits before he’d turned up, and Santa kissed her fiercely until they jolted together—he’d backed her right into the wall without realising it.

Santa broke away, as though his brain had been jolted into catching up with his mouth all at once and realising it was getting away from himself. “Right,” he said, flushed red as his fur-trimmed suit. “Ah. Goodnight, dear boy.”

“Dear Nanny,” she corrected automatically, flushed red herself, though Nanny’s Scottish brogue had slipped away from her. They had only been kissing for less than two minutes, but she still tugged at her jacket and patted her hair, as if to make sure it was all still in place. “London tomorrow, yes?”

“Oh. Right. If we’re still on—”

“’Course. Warlock’ll go down around 8, I’ll come and collect you from the gardener’s cottage around 9, all right?”

“I’ll be ready,” Santa promised, and then they both nodded at one another, and turned to go their separate ways.

*

They did not talk about it.

They did not _ever_ talk about it.

Instead Warlock Dowling turned four, and then five, and six, and seven, and eight, and nine, and Christmases followed. Nanny met Santa in the parlor, always with a blue-and-cream scarf around his neck and a new blue and cream offering next to the plate of biscuits—mittens, a bobble hat, socks, a tea cosy—and helped him unload yet another set of presents, including something particularly special of her own—an ant farm, a hamster with the world’s most intricate hamster habitat, a play spy set with binoculars, a handheld video game console with the setting to turn the noises off permanently disabled, certificates for guitar lessons when his parents only wanted him to learn the piano—even though Warlock had stopped believing in Santa after a raucous seventh birthday party for the French Ambassador’s daughter.

Some things existed whether or not anybody believed in them. Some things were true whether or not anybody admitted them aloud.

Presents duly arranged, Santa would sit to eat the biscuits, and Nanny would sit and talk with him about Warlock, or London, or Other Places. They might laugh, or they might argue, but slowly a tension would begin to simmer in the parlor, buoying them both until it could no longer be stood.

And then Nanny would walk Santa to the back entry, and kiss him under the mistletoe.

Neither of them had known, before these few years, how very many ways there were to kiss another person.

There were kisses that went slow and kisses that went fast, kisses that tasted like the argument they’d been having on their way down the hall and kisses that tasted like a comfortable silence. There were kisses with hands on faces and kisses with hands on necks and kisses with hands on waists and hips and ribs, each different from the last. There were kisses that lingered, breathing one another’s air, and kisses that stopped as suddenly as they started, kisses that cut off words and kisses that whispered themselves from lip to lip.

There was only one thing the kisses were not: long.

It was only a Christmas kiss. Only a moment’s worth of excuse, only one minute of one night where Nanny and Santa could meet as equals, where sides did not exist, where the only duty was to the mistletoe’s tradition.

And then it was goodnight.

They didn’t talk about it. They might have, if it hadn’t meant anything—but they didn’t, and it did.

*

It snowed heavily, the Christmas after Warlock had turned ten. It snowed and snowed and snowed, the novelty of it fading from magical to worrisome to downright frightening as the storm raged on. Ice was forming along electrical lines and gutters, travel advisories urged everyone to stay home, and the back-up generator to the house had been double- and triple-checked, just in case, before the family went to bed.

Warlock had, of course, declined his goodnight song from Nanny, which he’d been doing for the last year or so. He felt, as did Thaddeus Dowling, that he was too old for a Nanny now; Nanny would have gladly gone, relieved to be rid of the snotty child with too many electronics and too many fart jokes, except she obviously needed to stick around for nefarious reasons.

Not to mention, his fart jokes needed some work.

It had gone two in the morning by the time Nanny made her way to the parlor, having waited for Warlock to fall asleep down the hall before creeping downstairs. The tree glittered in the moonlight, piled with presents underneath, but the biscuits were still in their place on the coffee table, waiting for Santa.

Nanny snapped her fingers, lighting a fire in the grate, and waited as well.

She didn’t have to wait long. By half-two, the atmosphere in the parlor changed, brightening a little in greeting as Santa popped into existence. Nanny stood in front of the fireplace, silhouetted in flames; Santa stopped in his tracks, watching her, tracing the flicker of firelight along all her edges with his eyes.

“It’s the last Christmas,” she said, without turning to face him. “It’s funny, you know. All this time, I’ve _known_ what we were waiting for, how long we’d have here, and now that it’s just around the corner—now that it’s going to _be here—_ do you think we’ve just been fooling ourselves, angel? Do you think there was any point to this?”

“Of course there was,” Santa answered, soothing automatically. He reached out, like he meant to put one large hand on her shoulder, but he couldn’t quite cross the distance and the hand dropped back to his sides. “We’re showing Warlock that he has a _choice_. When it’s his time to choose, he’ll have all the information he needs to do it. To choose the right thing.”

Nanny hummed sceptically, and Santa kept a careful eye on her as he went about unloading his bag with all manner of obnoxious presents for a ten-year-old boy: a stomp rocket, a smart ball that counted how many times you kicked it, a collection of robots that promised to do various things they almost certainly could not do at all, rather a lot of Legos, a 3D puzzle of something called a Death Star, a how-to guide and prop set for beginner’s magic, a skateboard. He’d be a proper devil, after this. Santa couldn’t help but chuckle, imagining it.

“I’m not really sure there is a _right_ choice,” Nanny picked up again suddenly, tucking an iPhone box into Warlock’s stocking. “End the world, don’t end the world, rule the world, pass on ruling the world. What if he _can’t_ choose? Or if he chooses, and Heaven and Hell decide to just—ignore what he’s chosen?”

“I’m not sure that’s a thing they can do. He’s the Antichrist. They need him to either do it or not.”

“Well, what if it’s part of the Plan because humanity _needs_ him to do it? If they need the world to end so they can rebuild it, just like Noah—”

“No,” Santa cut off, alarmed, “No, that’ll never happen again, She _promised—”_

“Oh, sod Her promises,” Nanny shot back. “No one really knows what She’s promised or not promised, do they? She could’ve promised everything and meant, you know, everything but only after this or that, or everything but only if you earn it, or everything but not forever, or—”

Santa huffed, snapping his fingers to activate the child-safety features on the tablet he was stuffing under the tree. “She isn’t trying to trick them, you know. She _loves_ them; She wouldn’t _destroy_ them.”

“Yeah,” Nanny spat, “She said She loved _us_ too.”

There was a long, cold silence in the parlor. The fire in the hearth went out.

“Crowley,” Santa finally said, softly in the dark. “Oh, Crowley.”

“Save it, angel. Look, let’s just—the biscuits this year are those ridiculous toffee-date things you like. From Fortnum & Mason.”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s fine,” Nanny sighed, any bitterness she might have allowed to creep to the surface being swallowed down the same way it had been swallowed down for the last six thousand years. “It’s fine. Whatever.”

It wasn’t fine, and Santa wished, not for the first time, that Nanny would _tell him_ , would confide in him, would let herself be seen and known and _understood._ But they were on opposite sides, even if they did meet here every year, to deliver presents and trade _affections_ in the dark, and Santa knew that there was nothing he could say to let those secrets unlock themselves. He wondered if there ever would be.

“Biscuits,” Nanny repeated, beckoning to him. “Come on.”

The biscuits _were_ good, some of Santa’s very favourites, and Nanny picked up her knitting—still blue and cream, although the _click-click_ of her needles had grown much faster, and her stitches much more complicated—while he ate them as slowly as he could, waiting for some of the tension to drain out of her shoulders.

Finally the last biscuit had been eaten and the row of stitches completed. There was nothing left to keep them there together in the dark.

Santa stood, and offered Nanny his hand. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she sneered, but she took it nonetheless, and they walked like that through the house, down the halls they’d come to know so familiarly, into the kitchen. To the back entry.

The mistletoe was there again this year, as it always was. The white berries seemed to shine in the dark like a beacon. Like stars.

“May I?” Santa asked, hushed, the way he always asked. Nanny nodded, the way she always did, and braced herself.

Santa lifted his hands to her cheeks, cradling her face in his soft palms. She tilted her head down, a little—she was taller already on a good day, and in her kitten heels she was taller yet—and closed her eyes behind her dark lenses, waiting, but the kiss didn’t come.

“Opposite sides,” he said, clearly distracted, his mind miles away as he ran his thumbs gently across her cheekbones. “I’ve never been able to figure that out, you know. It’s so _easy_ to love you.”

Nanny’s breath hitched, her eyes snapping open, and she began to say, startled, “ _Aziraphale_ —” but he beat her to her own mouth, kissing her firmly, tenderly, kissing her with _intent_ , a kiss that said _I mean to be kissing you_ , a kiss that said _I mean to be loving you_ , a kiss that was defiant and purposeful, _I will love you no matter what they think of it, no matter whether the world ends._

_I love you._

And then the kiss was over, and Santa was steadying Nanny on her own two feet before letting her go.

“Aziraphale,” she said, clutching at him. “Aziraphale, you can’t just _say—”_

“I can,” he cut off, gentle but as definitive as he’d ever been. “And I have, and I meant it. Goodnight, my dear.”

And then he was gone, leaving Nanny standing in the doorway of the back entry, watching the snow swirl across the garden in his wake.

*

The world ended, and then, upon further reflection with one Adam Young, changed its mind.

In London, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square, and an angel and a demon finally learned what it was like to kiss _without_ an extravagant white beard between them.

*

It had taken some getting used to: being back in the bookshop full time, wrangling customers away from his first editions instead of hydrangeas back into their beds. Gardening had not exactly come naturally to him the way it had Crowley, but Aziraphale had not really _done_ the gardening on the Dowling estate anyway—at least, not in the traditional manner. Customers were rather less inclined to be influenced by gentle nudges than roses were, but Aziraphale had been managing for some two hundred years before taking up the gardener’s post; he imagined he’d get used to them again, in time.

“Close up early,” a tempting little voice said in Aziraphale’s ear, whispering along his nape. “It’s Christmas Eve, angel. Close up early and I’ll take you to dinner.”

Aziraphale grinned to himself, pretending to ignore that the little voice was now laying kisses along the skin just above the back of his collar. “Goodness,” he murmured instead. “I’ve ever so much work to do.”

The little voice now had hands to go with it, running down his chest, fiddling a little with his bow-tie. “It can _wait,_ I’m sure. Until after Christmas. Until after the holidays. You’ve earned a break, haven’t you, sweetheart? You’ve earned a little night out with your beau.”

“My _beau?”_ Aziraphale asked, laughing.

“Partner, then,” Crowley answered, finally losing his patience and pulling the chair away from the desk, spinning it around to loom over Aziraphale properly, all wicked smiles and cocked hips. “Husband, even.”

Aziraphale hummed, and picked up Crowley’s left hand, pressing a kiss to the ring there. “And what does my husband ask of me tonight? What could I give him, to celebrate Christmas?”

“Dinner,” Crowley repeated promptly. “One of those proper ostentatious places that get all hung up with greenery and serve you an overpriced dry roast and potatoes and claim to be just like Mother used to make, although of course we haven’t got a mother so we’ll never know the difference, and then—”

“Let’s compromise,” Aziraphale cut him off, before he could go down too far in his demonic imaginings. “Roast duck with truffled potatoes, and French onion soup just for you. And then a walk around to find dessert at any place that’ll take us.”

Crowley grinned crookedly. “I like French onion soup,” he agreed. “But you know _any_ place will take us if we want, angel.”

“But it’ll be a nice stroll, won’t it, and I think we might even have a few flurries later. A few _very light_ flurries.” Aziraphale directed that last up at the sky, as if giving the clouds a directive, and Crowley laughed.

“All right,” he said, kissing Aziraphale slowly, and then perhaps a little deeply for six o’clock in the evening, before the doors to the shop were properly locked. “All right.”

They did close up the shop, eventually—after Crowley had been thoroughly kissed, of course—and they went out, had their roast duck and soup, split a bit of tiramisu and black mousse cake at some little Italian place on their way back through Soho. The flurries did stay very light, but Crowley was still pink and flushed with cold by the time they got back to the bookshop, and Aziraphale set about warming him up with a cup of cocoa and a snuggle under a blanket, _not_ that Crowley would admit to being snuggled if it were the end of the world all over again.

There, curled together on the sofa, half-asleep already with bellies full of hot drink and a little bit of whisky, Crowley pushed Aziraphale down to the cushions and kissed him again, slow and wondering, a careful exploration of things they were beginning to know about one another.

“I wondered what it might be like, to have you like this,” Aziraphale said underneath him, rubbing his thumbs into the spaces just above Crowley’s hip bones. He was still wearing his jeans, flash bastard, but Aziraphale thought he could have him in jimjams before the hour was done. “Soft and warm like this.”

“I’m never soft and warm,” Crowley glowered, before kissing Aziraphale again—soft and warm indeed. “I’m a _rake_.”

“Are you?” Aziraphale laughed into the kiss, feeling Crowley’s grin tilt up at the side of his mouth again. “How dastardly of you.”

“I wondered too, you know,” Crowley said, some minutes later. “What it might be like to have you for longer than a minute or two on Christmas Eve. Without that _ridiculous_ costume on.”

“You liked that costume.”

“I definitely didn’t.”

“You did, and I liked Nanny too, you know. She always pretended to be so severe, but she had a big heart.”

“Blasphemy,” Crowley declared, though he was distracted by one of Aziraphale’s hands slipping past the waistband of his jeans. “You take that back.”

“Shan’t. She was always showing up on Christmas Eve to leave a special present for Warlock. What’d you get him this year, Nanny, dear?”

Aziraphale had said this with a smirk, meaning to catch Crowley out, but above him, Crowley stopped. Pulled back. His lips were reddened with kisses; his eyes, yellow from edge-to-edge, were strangely sorrowful.

“I didn’t,” he admitted, sitting back. He looked, suddenly, like a lost little child himself, the way Warlock had once looked upon finding his Winnie-the-Pooh stuffie gone missing. Untethered; forlorn. “I—I’m not Nanny anymore. It’s not my place.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, sitting up after him and reaching for him. “My dear, you’ll always be Nanny, if you want to be.”

Crowley shrugged. “He’ll grow up. Grow old. Forget about us. In eighty years he’ll be gone, angel. Eighty years is nothing.”

“It isn’t. Eighty years is a _lifetime_ , Crowley. _His_ lifetime. You could be a part of it, if you wanted.”

“He’s not the Antichrist.”

“No, he’s not,” Azirpahale agreed. “And Adam Young is at home with two parents who love him very much, and a whole host of friends who will take care of him. Warlock Dowling, on the other hand, is here in London, and he’s without his Nanny this year.”

He rubbed his hands down Crowley’s arms, soothing him, and for a long moment, Aziraphale thought Crowley would brush him off, disappear upstairs, decline to ever speak about Warlock again. To swallow back that sorrow, the same way he had done for six thousand years, and disallow himself from what he’d really wanted all that time: to be loved.

“You just want to be Santa again,” Crowley accused, sagging into Aziraphale’s chest with a sniff. “I knew it. You just like the costume.”

Aziraphale smiled, and cupped one hand around the back of Crowley’s neck, playing his thumb along the tiny little hairs at his nape. “I make an excellent Mr. Claus, whatever you say. Now come on—if you’re to be in charge of Santa’s sleigh tonight, we’d best get moving.”

“The Bentley is _not_ a sleigh. And no beard this time—I’m sick of coming off Christmas Eve with beard burn.”

“Maybe just a _little_ beard this time.”

“ _No beard_.”

“You love my beard burn.”

“I really do not.”

“You love me, though.”

There was a pause, in which Crowley kissed Aziraphale deeply, brilliantly, trying to show him exactly the benefits of kissing without a beard, but when he pulled back, Aziraphale was dressed in from head-to-toe in red, with a full, white beard, and the skin around Crowley’s mouth was already flushed.

“Hey,” Crowley protested, indignant, “you said a _little_ beard!”

*

“Had the weirdest dream last night,” Warlock said, when he arrived in the parlor the next morning. The presents under the tree glistened in the morning light, shining like a dragon’s hoard. He scoffed at it, doubting that there would be anything in there he _actually_ wanted, now that Nanny—who he had long suspected of doing his parents’ holiday spying for them—was gone. “Nanny was in it.”

His mother hummed and handed him a mug of cocoa while they waited for Dad to join them. That had been one of Nanny’s traditions, too. “Why was it weird?”

Warlock shrugged, frowning. “I was like, super sure that I was awake, I guess. Woke up and wanted a snack, but when I got to the kitchen Nanny was there. With Santa Claus.”

Harriet Dowling’s eyebrow rose. “With Santa?”

“I told you it was weird. I don’t even believe in Santa.”

He sipped at his cocoa; it was good, but not as good as Nanny always made it. She used to come down, Christmas mornings, and stand in the back of the parlor with her arms folded while Warlock tore through his presents, stepping in here and there to grab up the discarded wrapping paper before it could overwhelm them all, and then she helped Cook and Jim Barnes serve Christmas breakfast, which she did not eat. She never ate.

She had been weird, Nanny had. He hadn’t realised it, really, when she’d been around, but now that she was gone he occasionally got the sense that she had been _really_ weird.

“What was she doing?” his mum asked, interrupting his thoughts. “What were they doing in the kitchen?”

Warlock thought. He could barely remember now, the dream already dissipating in the morning light, but the longer he poked at it the more the picture coalesced until, abruptly, he _did_ remember.

“I think—I think I saw Nanny kissing Santa Claus.”

His cheeks flushed, embarrassed and a little disgusted. _Grown-ups_ , ew.

But she had looked happy, Warlock remembered. Nanny had. She’d been laughing, even, and holding on to Santa like she knew him, and trusted him. Nanny had been _weird_ , sure, but maybe she deserved someone like that. Someone who would make her happy.

He wished, suddenly, that it hadn’t been a dream at all. That Nanny had been here, that she’d been happy, that she’d made the good cocoa and that she’d offer one more time to sing him to sleep—

Just then, the doorbell rang at the front of the house. This was unusual, being an official London residence with loads of security, but it did happen.

“I got it!” Thaddeus Dowling called, making a commotion as he finally made his way down the stairs. There was the muffled noises as he chatted to some Secret Service agent or another, then an _okay_ , and then the door opened.

“Ambassador Dowling,” a distinctive Scottish brogue said, soft but somehow loud enough for Warlock to hear it all the way into the parlor, and he was on his feet in an instant, running, skidding into the front hall, and _yes_ , it was, it was _Nanny,_ arm in arm with an _awfully_ familiar waist-coated gentleman with a halo of white curls and a neatly trimmed white beard.

“Happy Christmas,” she was saying. “May I introduce you to my husband? Mr Klaus. Aziraphale Klaus.”

Mr Klaus caught Warlock’s eye, and winked. Warlock laughed.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @[forineffablereasons](http://forineffablereasons.tumblr.com)!


End file.
